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| A Journal News editorial

Mourners console each other outside the Oct. 23, 2011, funeral in Pennsylvania for Amy Friedlander and her children Molly, 10, and Gregory, 8. Samuel Friedlander shot his children, bludgeoned his wife, and killed himself in the family's Cross River home days earlier. / Seth Harrison / The Journal News

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The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services collects data on domestic-violence reports. DCJS lists the information by county. Each county listing contains the reporting agencies, the reported offense(s) and the relationship between the reported victim and perpetrator. Find the latest data, for 2011, at www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/domesticviolence/index.htm.

Vice President Joe Biden gestures as he speaks in Montgomery County, Md., on Wednesday about reducing domestic violence. / Charles Dharapak/AP

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When a whole brood of first-graders are shot to death in their school, those left behind are obliged to remove their blinders and address the harm. Vice President Joe Biden has been doing just that, leading the nationwide conversation about gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre. The subject this week was the nexus between firearms and domestic violence — something too often swept under the rug by policymakers, communities and families. Progress on this front — even without any new gun laws — will save lives, especially those of women and children.

Biden addressed the subject Wednesday in Rockville, Md., where he announced a new initiative to reduce domestic-violence homicides. Brooklyn and Westchester County are among 12 jurisdictions that will share $2.3 million in funding under the Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative. It aims to help county and municipal government officials better monitor high-risk offenders and identify potential victims. The initiative will be modeled after efforts in Maryland and Massachusetts.

Awareness, training

More awareness on this front, coupled with better training for police, prosecutors and judges, have helped reduce domestic-violence deaths in many venues. New York City, in the mid-2000s, reduced the number of domestic-violence murders by 55 percent over a five-year period; that translated into about 34 fewer slayings. Steps included assigning at least one domestic-violence officer to each city precinct. Maryland’s homicide rate linked to domestic violence has fallen 34 percent in five years.

A cavalcade of grim numbers point up the need to act. Biden noted that between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of all shootings with four or more victims began with the targeting of a girlfriend, spouse or former intimate partner. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, which studied 56 mass shootings since 2009, concluded that 57 percent involved domestic violence. Baltimore County police Chief Jim Johnson, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, told lawmakers that in homes where there is a gun and a history of domestic violence there is a 500 percent increase in the chance “that that person will be victimized by gun violence.”

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In New York, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services reported that domestic-violence homicides increased 17 percent in 2011, representing 171 deaths; women were the victims in 75 percent of the “intimate partner homicides.” Firearms figured in 25 percent of the slayings; knifes, cutting instruments or blunt objects were the weapon of choice 40 percent of the time. Other studies have identified firearms as the instrument of destruction at a significantly higher rate.

Mark Grace, director of the mayors’ group, told USA Today in February: “Mass shootings … are the tragedies that capture the public’s attention. But every day, 33 Americans are being killed, mostly with handguns, and distressingly often by a family member or intimate partner.”

In his remarks in Rockville, Biden recalled a time when domestic violence was all but a taboo subject for policymakers — as it still remains in too many circles. The former U.S. senator from Delaware recalled receiving death threats as the Senate Judiciary Committee he chaired first held hearings on violence against women. He was the prime sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, passed in 1994, which gave broad new protections for women. An expanded version of the measure was signed into law last week by President Barack Obama.

“I was pilloried,” said Biden, in an account carried by The Washington Post. He said he was told that domestic violence was a social problem beyond the reach of federal lawmakers. “We were constantly told that nothing could be done.”

Some of the same skepticism and pessimism hangs over the gun-control measures being touted by the White House after the Dec. 14 school shooting — 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The first victim was shooter Adam Lanza’s mother, shot as she slept in her bed. It is only fitting that policymakers now return there — to the home.